Chapter Text
King and Country
Part One: I Want to Break Free
The sun's rays were just beginning their half-hearted illumination of the dank prison cell when Captain Edmund Blackadder awoke, with the vague sensation that his slumber had not been restful. He was aware that his dreams had been peopled with strange figures, figures he could only half remember, as if they were characters from a book he'd read many years before. Yet somehow they were more real than that. It was almost as though they were trying to tell him something, trying to get some kind of message through...
"Oh, bloody hell," he groaned, as he suddenly came fully awake. Now that consciousness had returned, he had no trouble remembering -- and he sincerely wished that the dreams he'd had were just dreams, and not the hazy recollections of the night before. He covered his head with his pillow and groaned again.
"You all right in there, Captain?" called a voice from outside.
"Yes, yes, I'm all right," he spat. "Why shouldn't I be all right? After all, I've just been humiliated by a roomful of MP's, visiting me during intimacies with a lovely young lady ambulance driver -- how was I to know she was General Melchett's niece? -- and arrested in the nude, no less, by that gawking desk jockey Kevin Darling, and then stripped of my command! So, private, why shouldn't I be all right?"
"Um...'cause they're comin' to get you out now, sir?" offered the thoroughly chastened enlisted man.
At that moment, the pompous voice of Captain Kevin Darling wafted into the holding cell through the barred door. It seemed that he was speaking to someone who had arrived with him; Blackadder raised himself to an elbow to listen.
"...and now perhaps Captain Blackadder will learn that a bit more decorum is expected of an officer in the British army. He should be more like you, sir...no wonder they gave you his unit. Congratulations on your new command."
Blackadder could have shredded the moth-eaten prison blanket with his bare hands. //My replacement?// he thought indignantly. //They bring my replacement here to collect me? How could they have found someone so quickly? It would have to be someone at least equal to my rank, and I don't know of any new officers to be assigned here. It's not that paper-pusher of Melchett's, so--//
"Thanks, Captain, but there's nothing about this command to congratulate me for -- not yet, anyway. Only a loser like Blackadder would have been satisfied with it...ah, I can't wait to get back to my own unit, flying free through the clouds, blasting the Germans to Kingdom Come and sending their pilots to fiery death on the unfeeling earth below..."
Blackadder's head whipped around in shock. He sprang up from his cot and peered out the cell door at the figures in the hall. //That voice, that contemptuous, oh-so-arrogant voice -- it's not possible, they couldn't have given my command to *him*...//
Beside Captain Darling, a tall, blondish man stood, decked out in the tight-fitting and stylish uniform of the Royal Flying Corps. His arm was in a sling and he was surveying the holding area with obvious distaste.
"Flasheart," he gasped in disbelief. He backed away from the door and cast his eyes heavenward. "There is," he muttered to himself, "no justice in this world." Blackadder had taken malicious pleasure in the news that the egotistic pilot had been shot down during the past week, but on the whole he'd hoped never to hear the name of Lord Flasheart ever again...much less encounter him in person. Worse yet, it now seemed he would be serving under him. He shuddered involuntarily at the wording. His short stint in the Flying Corps had been unpleasant, to put it mildly; this would undoubtedly be even more unbearable. He grimaced as the men outside approached his cell.
"Well, well, if it isn't Captain Blackadder," purred Darling, smiling like the proverbial Cheshire Cat. "I hardly recognized you, with your clothes on."
The prisoner just glared wordlessly, although this seemed to amuse the other man even more.
"I suppose you could say that I caught you with your pants down, 'eh, Captain?" Darling continued, chuckling to himself.
"How lucky for you that doing so brought some measure of amusement to your otherwise dreary life," he retorted smoothly. "Have you come to get me out, or are you just here to relive fond memories of annoying the animals at London Zoo?"
Darling's eyes narrowed. "The general wants you to be released. At first I advised against it...until I found out what was in store for you."
"Oh?" he asked suspiciously. "And what, pray tell, is in store for me?"
"Not just you, Blackadder, but also for the men formerly under your command," Flasheart replied briskly, finally condescending to speak to him. "You've been replaced by a more competent officer, someone who's not so stupid as to be caught with the niece of his commanding general; and someone who's guaranteed to have your men whipped into shape in no time. Got to separate the wheat from the chaff, 'eh? Can't have any slackers in *my* unit," the pilot said, staring pointedly through the bars at the cell's lone occupant.
The Captain held his temper admirably, he thought, and said through tightly clenched teeth, "May I point out that it is highly irregular to give a ground assignment to a member of the Royal Flying Corps, particularly the command of an infantry unit?"
"Melchett's orders," the pilot retorted. "And what he says goes, even if he *is* mad as a mongoose. But cheer up, it's only temporary -- just until this heals," here he gestured towards his injured arm, "Or until they send Melchett a permanent replacement. Whichever."
Blackadder considered this. "They'll never find another officer before your arm is completely healed," he pointed out.
"Then I guess I'll be gracing you with my presence until they do." Flasheart grinned at him. "And as an added bonus, I'm sure that all those lovely ladies at the field hospital will be glad to hear that *I'll* be sticking around, if you get my drift -- woof woof!"
The dark-haired man moaned inwardly as the door to his cell was unlocked and he was led to freedom...or as much freedom as he could enjoy under Flasheart. So immersed was the Captain his own misery that he almost missed what (oddly enough) sounded like the word 'roses' in the middle of Flasheart's lewd ramblings...